Proper support for the Linux platform

Feature Requests Engine Features
#56

Since this topic has become slightly more relevant, I’d like to chip in.

I recently switched to using Linux. The reason? Because Roblox is beginning to work on Wine much better than it used to. The moment I heard someone got Roblox running in Wine I already started attempting to switch to using Linux and even ordered an SSD just to put Linux on.

The reason is that, in my opinion, Windows is incredibly bloated, full of lots of issues, annoying integrations, the UI is dated, and overall I’ve just had lots and lots of problems with Windows, from corruption to all kinds of things.

On top of that, Roblox (usually) runs significantly faster in Wine for me than on Windows (though getting it there was an enormous hassle and the difference is only about 30-60% faster depending on the game, so don’t assume you’ll go from 30 FPS to 300 or something crazy), and I have been using Studio and playing Roblox games for several weeks now inside of Wine.

The Roblox player has been working for much shorter than Studio yet the player works completely flawlessly. I haven’t had one rendering, performance, or other issue with the player. Though, it is required that you use a patch to fix the mouse becoming permanently stuck when right clicking (it’d be nice if Roblox decided to look into that but I doubt that’ll happen currently)

My one complaint with Roblox in wine is studio, which frequently crashes, and depending on how you set up rendering modes, or if you use DXVK, I had so many rendering issues, black screens, flickering, etc, and plugin windows are especially buggy. Out of the box, Studio works just fine its just a bit slow in terms of GPU usage, and does have other issues. (E.g. if you drag instances in the explorer it never stops showing the drag effect unless you open the context menu)

Overall, I am personally extremely happy I switched to Linux, being very technology focused, and, given my personal experiences with Windows I am relieved to not have to worry about my issues on there anymore.

42 Likes
#57

Someone has to bring back this topic every year so uhh yeah I’ll be the one i guess.
Roblox won’t come to linux in the near future, as what said before is still valid, it’s too much work for what it’s worth. However, if linux keeps growing at the rate it is now, then one day, eventually, Roblox will have to add linux support, linux’s desktop market share has went from 2.33% to 2.8% (September 2021 to September 2022, I don’t know about this month) according to this, that’s a huge increase for such a small market share. There are currently 74,277 games on Steam, with 10,716 of them having native linux versions, which is a huge number bump from the time that @Brinker7 mentioned but is a decline in percentage (roughly 14.5% of them are native); and 12% of all Steam games out of the 14% rated have a silver or higher rank on ProtonDB.All the linux players and developers of Roblox and myself can hope for is for linux to grow enough so that roblox can make a linux native port without it being a hassle.

ok cool but what about the current state of Roblox on linux? Well… it’s not that bad, grapejuice and wine are able to handle that, the player works FLAWLESSLY, but studio on the other hand… yep it still needs a seizure warning for a lot of the menus (which are near unusable unless you know how to navigate them without seeing them), and it crashes when using with some renderers (varies on each person’s device), and it has some other bugs which are significantly smaller but still exist, i don’t know about virtual machines though since i haven’t tried them yet, someone let me know how Roblox works on virtual machines if you use it like that.

But there are still concerns about what will happen to Roblox for linux, we don’t know if new features will cause new problems, we don’t know if some changes make our situation better or worse, but most importantly, Byfron, the anticheat Roblox has acquired and is looking forward to use, Byfron has been present on 3 games (Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Valorant, info from here) and only one of them works on linux (Apex Legends), fortnite isn’t supported for linux in the first place, and Valorant is broken probably due to their own anti cheat (info gathered from Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?), so there isn’t any evidence of whether or not Byfron’s anti cheats on roblox will affect linux users, but anti cheat software have always been the killer of linux gamers. so I want someone here to answer me on this one

Roblox won’t be getting a linux native version any time soon, Roblox on linux is hard to get working in the first place, but we still can use it, but will Byfron take away even these hacky solutions we have now in order to access Roblox on linux? Or is Byfron going to be one of the anti cheats that doesn’t have a seizure when sees someone is using linux?

Even if y’all never make a linux native version, just please don’t take the small things we have now.

Thanks for reading

Edit 1: added Steam and ProtonDB data, also added all the info i could gather about Byfron.
Edit 2: fixed some numbers.
Edit 3: removed “and we don’t have to deal with the new roblox app :sunglasses:” cause as of right now we also have to deal with it :frowning_face:

14 Likes
#58

Would be nice to have a linux studio version

14 Likes
#59

I’ll bring this topic back from the dead month to throw my support in.
Linux would be very much appreciated as a user who’s forced to dual boot windows only because of Roblox Studio’s lack of Linux support.

8 Likes
#60

At this rate, I’d throw in the towel, it’s never going to get a Linux binary.

1 Like
#61

If what I heard at RDC is anything, I wouldn’t lose faith. I was talking to a Studio engineer and Linux came up in conversation. They claimed another engineer made a native build of Roblox Studio in a day and it worked for them. The reason it never shipped was validation, which is a general problem for Linux - a program may work out of the box in testing but break on another distribution or desktop environment.

19 Likes
The new Roblox 64-bit Byfron client forbids Wine users from using it. (Most likely unintentional)
#62

Which is an issue currently affecting numerous Debian-based distros using Grapejuice.

On Arch, Studio runs fine for everyone I’ve asked.

On Debian-based distros, Studio fails to login in (purportedly down to the introduction of Web2View to fix the plugin vulnerability discussed recently).

Obviously, don’t take these statements as sourced facts.

1 Like
#63

I think people seem to be forgetting the overhead that this causes in terms of getting features out. All desktop-based features usually release in parallel. If you add Linux into the equation, you’re not just targeting Ubuntu support, you have to start thinking about all the flavors out there. Even if you narrowed it down to a top three, there’s still too much overhead where feature parity wouldn’t make any real sense. Graphics libraries are very platform-specific. They’re using core-libraries at an operating system or kernel level. If you abstract that all away, it takes a lot of engineering time to get 1:1 on other platforms where these things don’t exist.

Additionally, Linux “desktop” has a ~2.6% market share compared to other desktop users. On the engineering side, it would take dedicated teams to this effort as well as proper build pipeline to establish compile / build targets. You can’t just build a target and pray it works on another architecture. The end product would be totally abysmal. There’s too many “what ifs” out there on a linux-based machine that the average user wouldn’t be able to properly install it. Simple validation would prove that much. You also have to maintain it. You need dedicated people for that.

Compiling a whole new executable, dedicated teams, build pipelines for so few users is laughable and there’s almost no ROI other than making the same few users who won’t let this go… happy.

5 Likes
#64

Supporting only the mainstream distros and desktop environments would already be enough.

I’m pretty sure you could easily find people in the community that would be willing to do that.

Take look at Discord - they only distribute .deb and .tar.gz, yet you can find it on many more distros than just Debian-based ones. Same applies to Steam.

Also, hey, have you guys heard about a thing called Flatpak?

3 Likes
#65

Lack of official support = Lack of realistic adoption. Nothing is stopping people from doing that now. This thread is a specific ask for proper support.

1 Like
#66

I’m pretty sure that the community that is currently using projects such as Grapejuice would adopt it. Not having to use Wine would already be a HUGE step forward.

Currently, Studio “runs” under Wine, but that’s about it. The only graphics mode that works is D3D11 with WineD3D, which has abysmal performance and efficiency. Vulkan doesn’t work, DXVK doesn’t work as well. Well, OpenGL also works but that’s even worse.
There is a plethora of bugs that are present just because it’s running under Wine.

Still, my point stands. Supporting Ubuntu-based distros and distributing a .tar.gz binary or something would already be enough. A Flatpak package would be ideal but apparently some Linux community members don’t like it because it’s user friendly.

6 Likes
#67

This, and no offline support are in my opinion the only things preventing studio from being a ‘true’ professional program.

Two critical features every modern program should have.

8 Likes
#68

I can confirm that Arch runs Studio completely fine - I remember having issues on Ubuntu with publishing being able to crash Studio.

5 Likes
#69

I believe this is the reason why Steam is only officially supports Ubuntu and for this, if Roblox does infact make a native build, then they would go for the most popular distro.

But I’ll admit, Roblox’s client with Wine performs soo much better, it is almost smooth at max graphics (which I don’t usually get on Windows 10)
With the push of Valve releasing the Steam Deck and constantly nagging developers and anti-cheat software providers to support Linux natively or help making it run better via Proton, I believe a opportunity might pop up in their eyes. I lost hope for VR support on Roblox a while ago constantly checking for topics and posts about VR on here, but after seeing them start to work on it again and them also fixing a really annoying issue I once had, I was filled with joy.

I wish Roblox had better transparency.

Although, I was really excited for Byfron, at the time I was very sceptical by it and did my own research, went to the Wayback Machine and found the founders of the project and they seem like really nice people:

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WM Page

Especially David as they claim to have contributed to FOSS repositories, including Wine.

6 Likes
#70

Did you manage to run it with Vulkan or DXVK?

#71

Vulkan works for me - It feels less laggy than OpenGL (which I normal use) but sometimes the window will turn white then back to normal at random times and the input lag is really bad at times.

#72

Community support isn’t the same as official support. Roblox is a closed sourced platform. If they were to port it (they won’t), they’d do it themselves. No person is going to heavily bank on a “blinded” port.

Your point lacks the basic principles of understanding the weight and responsibility it takes to support another platform at 1:1 feature parity. I’ve had to port enterprise level applications from one distribution to the next. The scope is massive. The overtaking is huge. If there’s no indication of widespread adoption, you waste engineering time and people start getting mad.

This is a thread where Linux users are going to talk the loudest and even then, that’s not an accurate distribution to the amount of users that may or may not take it.

Ports exist when a market share is favorable enough to coast widespread adoption. When you have a market share of barely ~3% (less if we talk about Roblox users), you’re only really catering to very few developers.

Until the market share increases, official support will never happen and unfortunately, the basis of what you’re stating realistically doesn’t make sense. Therefore, your points are invalid.

1 Like
#73

I think you have misunderstood me, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough.

I never meant that the community should make a native Linux port for Roblox Studio. I was trying to suggest that Roblox could make an official port for Ubuntu-based distros and a tarball that can be repackaged by the community for different distros.
That is how numerous pieces of software are distributed (e.g. Discord, Steam).

3 Likes
#74

Never heard anything like this from anyone except evangelists that wouldn’t be interested in using Roblox anyways. Grapejuice, by far the most popular way of running Roblox in Linux, is mostly distributed in flatpak nowadays.

A Flatpak and the .tar.gz binary for packaging purposes would most likely leave everyone satisfied. Roblox would win too as overall they’d have to worry less about dependency issues, which would improve on the “validation” issue @TheNexusAvenger has pointed out. However, sadly Ubuntu has split away with their own universal packaging standard, Snap, so Roblox would either have to package for both or choose a single one (if they did, Canonical’s Snap would probably be their choice because of Ubuntu’s bigger userbase).

5 Likes
#75

But you still can install software without it, and you can install Flatpak as well.

Furthermore, some widely used Ubuntu-based distros don’t install snapd by default and modified their repositories so that they don’t rely on Snaps (e.g. Linux Mint, Pop!_OS).

1 Like